Bernard Meisler

Welcome. My name’s Bernard Meisler, I’m the Technology Strategist for a rapidly-growing ad agency located in the Bay Area. Previously I was a software developer at MTV-Networks in NYC. I taught various courses in multimedia/interactivity at NYU for 10 years (till I moved out here last January), and also ran my own consulting company for about as many years, with clients such as Roche Pharmaceutical, Sony Music, Price-Waterhouse, the Rubin Museum, FIT, and many others.

I’m going to write about rich media on this blog. I love RIAs. I’m very excited about technologies such as Flex, Apollo, SilverLight, JavaFX and AJAX. I’ll also be writing about streaming video, DRM, mobile phones, widgets and gadgets, avatar-based worlds, neogeography and any other cutting edge rich user experiences. I may chime in on sports, politics and especially media when I feel it’s appropriate (or maybe even when it’s not).

I thought a nice way to kick off this blog would be to discuss the downsides of RIAs. All of them – listed in the above paragraph – share the same set of potentially tragic flaws, to varying degrees. In future entries, I’ll discuss solutions to these problems. Here’s the short list:

1. Need for a plug-in.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
3. The back button problem, aka “deep linking”, history and bookmarking.
4. Metrics/page impressions.

In summary, there’s not much you can do about #1 – it’s a deal breaker for many clients. Solutions are available for #’s 2 and 3 – tho most clients don’t realize it, or refuse to believe it. #4 is also solvable – but only if you try…